


a voice made of wings and whispers

by walking_through_autumn



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walking_through_autumn/pseuds/walking_through_autumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the raid, Hinami finds a way to move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a voice made of wings and whispers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cellularskies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cellularskies/gifts).



> Title borrowed from Hannu Rajaniemi’s "The Fractal Prince". Cellularskies/mcsgunner, I hope you enjoy this! Thank you for the lovely prompts :) Have a wonderful holiday season!

She woke to the sound of rain and her phone ringing.

It felt like it had been raining forever, she thought as she sat up in bed. Summer thunderstorms that started in the evening and lasted through the night, only to leave the air muggy in the unyieldingly hot day. She looked at her reflection in the window and the streaks of water running down the glass, her gaze distant. The city lights were blurred, watery halos.

The ringing stopped. A few seconds later it started again.

With one hand she felt for the phone and picked it up. “Hello?” she said, still staring out the window.

“ _Ah, Hinami? It’s Takatsuki! I’m sorry, I couldn’t pick up your call earlier. Were you sleeping?_ ”

Hinami clenched the blanket in her lap. “No. Thank you for calling back.”

It had been days since she called and sent a message, days since the summer thunderstorms started and never quite seemed to stop. She spoke softly so she wouldn’t disturb the others sleeping in the room beside hers.

“ _Are you okay, Hinami? You sound tired,_ ” Takatsuki said, the cheer in her voice toned down.

“I’m okay. I’m – I wanted to ask you for help, but I guess…I don’t know,” she said. She drew her knees up and hugged them with her free arm, burrowing her nose into the fabric. She breathed in and out, a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

“ _Oh no, it’s no problem! Is it about your big brother?_ ” Takatsuki asked.

Hinami drew her shoulders up. Kaneki had said he will find her, but he never did. “Yes,” she admitted. “Yes,” she said again, softer, angry with herself for feeling like crying.

There was silence on the other end of the line. Hinami closed her eyes and listened to the white noise and the downpour that nearly engulfed the sound. Kaneki once taught her about sudden showers and wrote for her the seasons and the rains that accompanied them. She still had that piece of paper. She had lost her mother in the rain – it only made sense that she might have lost her big brother in a torrent of water that she would never be able to smell her way through. The thought made her press her nose harder against the blanket.

“ _Hinami_?” Takatsuki said. There was an odd hitch in her voice, something that sounded like suppressed excitement.

“Yes?”

“ _Do you think you can meet me in that café? The same one where we first talked?_ ”

Banjou, Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante kept a close watch on her these days. Being with them stopped her from running out, straight into where the doves might be waiting. They were supposed to hide out here, through one of Banjou’s contacts, who secured this safe house for them. The old place with the scent of big brother was no longer safe. But being with them, even in this strange, foreign place, made her feel like her family might one day be whole again.

Hinami drew in a deep breath and asked, “When?”

.

The afternoon she went to the café the pavement was dry, as though the previous night of rain had never happened. Underneath her sunhat Hinami felt a bead of sweat trickle down her temple. The tinkling of the shop’s bell and the rush of cool air made her sigh in relief. She removed the hat and smoothed out her hair with one hand, then she rested it on her bag of necessities – what was left of her parents’ savings, and her phone.

“Hinami! Over here.”

She looked to the right, where Takatsuki was waving at her from a corner table. The woman looked and sounded as energetic as Hinami remembered. She smiled and made her way over. There was a laptop on top of the table – Takatsuki closed and slid it into her bag as Hinami sat down.

“Iced coffee fine with you?”

Hinami nodded, watching as Takatsuki waved the waitress over and ordered two iced coffees. She fiddled with the hem of her dress, unsure what to say all of a sudden. Takatsuki smiled at her, removing her spectacles and placing them on the table. Besides the two of them the café was empty of other patrons. It was quiet except for the sound of water being poured and the muted whirr of machinery behind the counter.

“I wanted to talk with you about your big brother,” Takatsuki began. She laced her fingers together and rested her chin on them. Her lips were quirked, not exactly like she was smiling, but like she knew something Hinami didn’t. She sounded kind when she said, “Why not you tell me what happened?”

Hinami stayed silent. Takatsuki didn’t seem to mind – she looked out the café window at the quiet side street, studying the occasional passer-by, only turning back to thank the waitress when she placed two iced coffees on their table. Hinami picked up her glass and stirred the ice with the straw, gazing into the dark liquid. The coffee here was just as fragrant as what she remembered from _Anteiku_ , though it had been eight months since she last drank coffee there.

She pressed her lips together and placed the glass back on the table. “Big brother is missing,” she said.

“Oh. Have you – asked the police for help?” There was something strange in her expression as she asked this, like she already knew the answer and why. Hinami wondered if that was what made her a bestselling author, this uncanny ability she has to read people.

She shook her head, unsure where to start. “He wanted to help – ” _her family at Anteiku_ – “our friends who were in trouble, and he said he will be back, but – ”

“But he never came back,” Takatsuki completed for her. “And you don’t know where to start looking for him.”

“…I couldn’t help this time either. It was like what you said, Ms. Takatsuki. I couldn’t do much then – and I couldn’t do anything this time either.”

That time Takatsuki had taken off her spectacles too, studying her with the same serious, intense gaze, words sharp but well-intentioned, alerting Hinami to how weak she really was.

“…have you tried looking for him, Hinami?” Takatsuki asked.

Hinami didn’t know how to explain without giving her identity away. The fact that the endless nights of rain have washed his scent away and she would never be able to find a trace of anything again – his scent, his blood, his warmth.

She settled on saying, “Yes. But I couldn’t find him. He’s not where our friends were.”

“Of course,” Takatsuki said. She took a sip of coffee and swallowed it. “How can I help you, then?”

“Huh?”

Hinami looked at her serious eyes and her small smile. Her smile was unbearably gentle as she said, “What were you hoping for when you called me? Were you hoping I would be able to find him for you? That I can tell you where he is? Or was it something else?”

“I – ”

She hadn’t been hoping for anything, really. She just felt that it was her only recourse. She didn’t know where Touka was, Tsukiyama never returned, Banjou, Ichimi, Jiro, and Sante were as clueless as she was, and _Anteiku_ –

She didn’t think she would be able to forget the pile of rubble that she and Banjou had seen from afar.

“I – I don’t know,” she said. She averted her gaze from Takatsuki and the knowing light in her eyes, focusing on a droplet of condensation sliding down the glass of coffee instead. The glass had left a wet stain on its coaster that was slowly spreading outwards. She thought of Kaneki’s sweat stains on the floor, in the training room, how he never forgot to wipe them away. “I – ”

“Because it has already happened, right?” Takatsuki said.

She nodded.

“Your big brother is already missing, for days, it seems like. You didn’t go to the police – because you cannot, for some reason – and you cannot find him on your own. You do not know where your friends are. The friends you do have know as little as you do,” Takatsuki said, unrelenting and unflinching and still with the same soft, cruel gentleness. “What did you think I could do, Hinami?”

“Nothing,” Hinami whispered. “Nothing, but I – I wanted…”

“What did you want?”

Takatsuki leaned forward. The knowing light in her eyes had turned into a gleam, almost hungry and fanatical. On instinct Hinami leaned away, as far as her seat would allow. Takatsuki, after a few seconds, smiled and resumed her previous position. She took a sip of coffee while Hinami tried to slow her heartbeat. With a slightly trembling hand, Hinami pulled her glass closer to her, stirring the liquid so the layer of melted ice blended with the rest of the coffee before taking a long swallow.

There was a distant, muted shout of laughter. The pavement outside the café seemed to shimmer in the heat.

“I think I know what you want,” Takatsuki began saying in a measured tone. The confidence and assurance in her voice made Hinami cling onto every word. “You want to stop being so helpless. You want to be able to do something next time, instead of staying behind to wait, and you think I know how you can do that.”

Once, she had thought it was enough to be there for Kaneki, to make him smile even if just for a little while. She liked his smile. She liked the patient way he taught her words and his murmurs of thanks whenever she brought him coffee or towels. She had thought those were the only things she could do.

 _You have an incredible gift, Hinami_ , Touka had once said when they were curled up on the couch in her home. _Your parents have left you their protection – and of course there’re those ears and that nose of yours_ , she had said, tweaking Hinami’s nose and making her laugh.

“I want to be stronger. I have to be,” she said. She looked Takatsuki in the eyes, the hunger in that gaze which she could not understand. “Do you know how I can do that?”

Takatsuki hummed in thought, one hand idly stirring her coffee. “Are you sure? The way I know of – you cannot turn back from it, once you decide to proceed. You’ll have to give up everything. The friends you do have now.” Hinami thought of those waiting for her and tried to push away the wave of guilt. “It’s not going to be easy. But if you do – ” the hunger in Takatsuki’s eyes mingled with growing glee – “you might become the strong person you want to be. You have the potential to be very powerful. You’ll no longer be helpless, and you’ll be able to protect those you want to.”

She thought, with a small jolt, of the peace Kaneki had turned his back on. The new allies he had gained, and those he had left behind, in the forest next to the crumbling buildings filled with blood and carnage. She wondered if she would become like him.

She bit her lip, closed her eyes, and made a decision. “How?” she whispered. “And why – why do you know so much?”

Eyes closed, she felt rather than saw Takatsuki stretch her hand towards her. The woman’s palm on her cheek was cold from the iced coffee. “Because I’m like you, Hinami. I belong in your world,” she said, a low purr in her voice.

.

She learnt how to aim for vitals instead of limbs. Takatsuki – _Eto_ , she said her real name is Eto – could not promise she would get her family back, but she promised strength, and Hinami felt she was getting there. Perhaps this was how Kaneki had felt, she thought, when he spent countless hours dodging invisible enemies and delivering crushing blows through the air. In his training ground he hurt nobody but himself. In her training grounds the blood on her cheeks and her hands smeared her clothes and left a smell that was sweet and sickening.

“You can become such a deadly butterfly,” Eto said, admiring her _kagune_ when she first showed them to her. Eto had caressed them, humming her appreciation when they jerked in response to her touch.

Her movements had been stilted and awkward at first. She never had any chance to use them – Kaneki hadn’t allowed her any chance to use them. She remembered what it had been like when she had used them to cut the investigator’s limbs off – the sensation of impact with flesh and resistance as she cut through an arm, a leg. She didn’t know if she wanted to relive that sensation.

Her first few missions Eto accompanied her, until the stilted swing of her _kagune_ became smoother, until the day she stopped hesitating before piercing through her opponent’s vitals. Eto praised her then, patting her on the head the way Touka used to.

That same day, Ayato was the one who found her when she was vomiting in the early hours of the morning, tears streaming down her cheeks as her stomach forced bile out her throat. She had eaten two weeks ago, so there was nothing left in her stomach. Her muscles contracted, again and again, making her feel sore and wrung out. She didn’t know why she was reacting this way, when all she had felt was a vague sort of numbness after her first mission.

“Hey,” he said.

She panted, pressing a hand against her stomach. Her head swam with fatigue, her eyes stung from her sweat, but every time she closed them she thought she could smell the blood of the people she had killed and their last shouts of terror. “Ayato?” she said in a hoarse voice.

Eto had introduced them, but they had different duties. Ayato hadn’t looked like he wanted to talk to anyone, so Hinami didn’t attempt to. She only really knew his sister, and she doubted that he wanted to hear about how little she knew of Touka’s current state of being.

She didn’t know what he wanted. She looked up at him while trying to regulate her breathing. He averted his eyes and seemed to hesitate before squatting beside her, holding out a bottle of water.

She eyed it for a second before reaching out to take it and uncapping the bottle with shaky fingers. She drank, soothing the burn of the bile, giving her stomach something to grip onto, until she needed to stop for air. “Thank you,” she said, soft and unsure but much clearer.

After a few seconds of silence, he asked, “Was it your first time killing?”

“No. Not really,” she said.

He cocked his head to the side and scoffed. “Not really? What does that even mean?”

She as good as killed the investigator who had killed her parents. “I…caused a lot of damage to a dove, and he couldn’t fight back when – ” _Touka_ – “when another person killed him.”

“Hmm.”

He seemed to be always frowning. Hinami thought she shouldn’t judge others, especially now when she smiled less and less. Maybe she should try. Kaneki always said she made him happy when she smiled, but she found that more difficult every day she was here, in this place where she could grow stronger, this place that she disliked because of what they had done to Kaneki.

“ _I’m afraid we cannot find Kaneki Ken either,_ ” Eto had said, the day she had brought Hinami to Aogiri.

Hinami had nearly gaped in surprise, before thinking, _of course._ “ _How…_ ”

“ _I’ve known your big brother Ka **na** ki is really Kaneki Ken. But that doesn’t matter now, does it?_”

“ _…No, I suppose it doesn’t,_ ” Hinami had said. She didn’t know how wide the spider’s web was cast, how much of what happened was determined the moment her brother emerged a sadder, harder person from Aogiri’s base. She supposed she, too, was a fly caught in this web.

“ _It’s such a pity…we really wanted him to join us, you know. But we’ll keep searching. So if you’re with us, perhaps one day you’ll get him back._ ”

“ _You hurt him badly,_ ” Hinami had said, legs shaking, thinking it might not be too late to go back. Her phone had not stopped vibrating since an hour ago. It must be Banjou, who must have found the note she had left behind in an empty room.

“ _He tried to resist._ ” Eto shook her head. “ _He shouldn’t have. If only he understood then we are trying to break the chains that bind this world – go beyond the boundaries that have been set…he was too stubborn._ ”

“ _…please don’t say that. Don’t say that of big brother._ ”

Eto had smiled at her then with a gleam in her eyes. “ _We won’t hurt you, Hinami. We’ll help make you stronger. We hope you’ll see why we’re doing all this._ ”

She hadn’t understood then, and she thought perhaps she wouldn’t quite understand for a long time. But Eto had been right in one thing. Hinami had been treated with patience, even with kindness, though she was expected to help them get rid of obstacles in their path. The days of watching Kaneki fighting for an obscure future seemed very distant.

“Ayato?” she asked, fiddling with the bottle cap.

“What?”

“Can I ask…why are you here? In Aogiri?”

Touka had never said much about Ayato – Hinami only knew about Ayato through Banjou. She never knew why Touka and Ayato went on such different paths.

“Why are you asking?” he muttered, his frown deepening into a scowl. He looked so much like Touka in that moment that Hinami had to blink and shake the image of her big sister away.

“…I’m here because I don’t want to be weak anymore, and because I’m looking for someone,” Hinami confessed. She gripped onto the material of her dress. “But I don’t actually know what I’m doing.”

Ayato continued scowling. He looked away from her and at the trees that surrounded the base. Hinami uncapped the bottle and drank a bit more water, slowly this time. The wind ruffled her hair and brought with it the scent of wood and an imminent storm.

“I’m here to be the strongest,” Ayato finally said. He said it in such a low voice, accompanied by the sound of the rustling leaves, that Hinami might not have heard it if not for her enhanced sense of hearing. “Ghouls are strong. We’re stronger than pathetic humans, and I’m gonna show them that. Aogiri is gonna show the world that,” he said, in a tone that suggested he had said it to himself a hundred times and will say it a hundred times more, like it was the only thing he could hold on to.

There was a boy she had once read books with in a public library. Touka had fretted and scowled and warned her about the danger, but Hinami had been happy. The boy had given her a bookmark. They had laughed together. But, like the times Kaneki had tried to right the wrongs he could see, the times spent laughing and reading books seemed like a vague, distorted memory.

“I don’t think ghouls are stronger than humans,” Hinami said.

“What? You’re gonna spout some peace bullshit even though you’re already here, huh?” Ayato said with a sneer.

She shook her head. She didn’t think peace was possible where she was. Kaneki had sought for peace in his own way, but the world didn’t want that. “I don’t think ghouls are stronger than humans…but we’re not weaker either,” she said.

Ayato snorted. “What kind of a half-assed answer is that? _That_ makes you feel better about being here?”

“No, it doesn’t. But…being here is the only way I can think of moving forward,” she said.

Ayato looked at her. It was the first time he really looked at her, in the eyes. His scowl eased, though his frown was no less intense. Hinami smiled a little. She couldn’t say she felt better – but knowing Ayato was here because he wanted to be stronger too, that maybe he understood the pain of losing people, made her feel like she could continue to stay with the organization, if only for her own, different reasons. She broke the eye contact and stood up, knees a little wobbly, but no longer feeling the intense need to vomit. “Thank you, Ayato…for the water.”

“Whatever,” he muttered. He stood up as well and stuck his hands in his pockets. He looked like Touka again in the proud way he held himself. She wondered if, when he smiled, she would remember Touka again.

“Let’s go back inside. It’s going to rain,” she murmured, looking up at the sky and hearing the distant roar of thunder. The sky was a dark purple, promising a wet day ahead.

Ayato’s eyes flicked to look over his shoulder at her, before he looked straight ahead and led the way back to the entrance of the base. Hinami waited a moment to breathe in the cool air before following. Just before she entered the building she felt the first drop of rain on her cheek.

.

It took a glance at a stand selling newspapers before Hinami realized, on an early autumn evening, that it had been two years and two months since she had lost her brother, sister, and left behind the few remaining people who knew and loved her. For a moment she stood on the street staring at the evening newspapers.

The chatter of two high school girls walking towards her brought her out of her thoughts. She walked on, her long dark skirt swishing at her calves. Eto had chosen these clothes for her, said it would be a change from the unshapely hood she had gotten used to wearing. They were in no way convenient if Hinami needed to fight and rely on her _kagune_ , but they helped her blend in. She was sure she seemed like an intern at some office, starched white blouse completing the look.

She had stashed her four-leaf clover dress in a place only she knew of, and all the head bands and clips she had once worn without a second thought. She touched her fringe, feeling only smooth hair slipping through her fingers. She was in need of a haircut. She closed her eyes, remembering two hands with blackened fingernails styling her hair according to a magazine, the careful motion of a brush combing through her hair.

A street away, she heard the smooth grind of wheels on granite as a taxi turned the corner. She opened her eyes and stood at the curb. She could smell him approaching and, beyond his smell, a more enveloping scent. She looked up at the skies and the thin layer of clouds.

 _Sudden shower_ , she thought, as the taxi pulled to a stop in front of her. The voice in her head was not her own. It was gentle and patient and soft. _Common in autumn and spring_.

“Where to, Miss?” the taxi driver asked after she had closed the door.

“Please go straight,” she said. The car had a faint odour of metal, cloying and suffocating. She wanted to alight as soon as possible, to breathe in the scent of the grass and the rain that washed away everything. But she had a mission to complete. “There’s a message from the tree, Torso,” she said, as he started driving through the quiet road.


End file.
